Oracle E-Business Suite Reviews

Oracle gives you the capability to do anything you need to do in multiple ways. There are different avenues to achieve the same result, and you can pick the one that best fits your company’s policies and procedures.

It's an end-to-end ERP solution. From a work order to financial reporting, everything is captured within one system. It's a single point of data entry, so once you enter data into the system, it flows all the way downstream.

One of the benefits is also one of the pitfalls. Sometimes users are overwhelmed by the multiple ways in which you can operate. They don't want all of that flexibility.

We're hosted, which adds a level of complexity. The system overall is stable, but our hosting partner is not the best.

We haven’t had any scalability problems. We have both small and large groups using it, and we are continuing to role it out to other organizations within the company.

We have two levels of support. My team is an internal support organization. Then, if need be, we have external support. With external support, you roll the dice. Some issues get resolved relatively quickly, while others drag on. It depends on the person working it.

Since we are hosted, we can’t do rollouts ourselves. We have to schedule them. A lot of our issues have been with our patching, since our hosting partner always seems to break something, which is frustrating. If we had the product all in-house there would be no issues. It’s relatively straightforward to set up.

Make sure that you understand the integration points between the different applications that you’re utilizing. You could make some major mistakes in setting it up. I would rate the product a nine out of ten. We’re pretty happy overall.

The integration of all the various modules is definitely the most valuable feature for us. We're a business outfit, so we have customers, we pay bills, and we look to Oracle primarily for products that can integrate into our existing system. If it doesn't, we look at something else, but we always start with Oracle first.

We use the billing module heavily. In fact, one of the things I was looking for were some of the new features in 12.2.4, which which include federal billing features. That's really going to be helpful for us and that's what we're upgrading to right now because we've had to have customizations before. We're hoping that the inherent functionality that we'll be upgrading to will allow us to drop some of our customizations. We try to keep our Oracle as vanilla as possible, so having those enhanced features is something that we're really looking forward to.

For simplicity's sake, we like to cut down on the number of interfaces that we need. It makes upgrading easier because of the integration and it helps me to oversee things from a functional perspective. We are doing an upgrade right now, but it also makes it easier to plan for your upgrades and to follow through on those plans.

We have project contracts for government customers, and that has been a little bit tougher to implement, because I don't think Oracle has a lot of clients on that. We implemented that about two or three years ago, but we haven't found a lot of people who are using it. What I'd like to see is not necessarily something in the functionality of the software, but rather a way to meet some of the other customers who are using the product, which would be helpful.

Also, we would like to do more with iExpense. We use iExpense right now for purchasing cards, but we do not use it for employee vouchers. I think we cannot use it two ways at the same time. We're using it right now for the purchasing cards, but we don't use it for employee vouchers. I think we would like to have more functionality in that area.

We've had it for twenty years, so it predates my tenure there. We're really simple; we are one legal entity, one operating unit, one ledger. We are embarking right now on implementing Multi-Currency as we do have some international business. We probably are going to do more with multi-org in the future, but we haven't started that yet. It's called Multi-Org, but it's not a module, it's just functionality. For example, we right now have one legal entity in the US. We just opened our office in Singapore, so if we have a need to establish a separate set of books for them, then that would be Multi-Org and we'd set up a new set of books for Singapore. But right now have everything in one US ledger.

I've been there six years and the only big thing we've really implemented is Project Contracts. Actually, we did hire an outside consultant, because that product is quite specialized. I don't recall there being any big issues with deploying that.

It's very stable. There's a little bit of bugginess in the billing area, but generally, because we've had it for so long, we've worked out a lot of our issues.

I think we still have enterprise licensing, for the most part, so it's easy to scale.

For one thing, we do a lot of work with the federal government, but the federal government isn't the federal government. It depends on which piece of the federal government you work with. Each of your customers in the government have different requirements and you really do have to do some customizations around billing. Because we have all these different federal government customers, some of them want the bills uploaded into a certain system that they have to process their bills, or they want the bills to be in a certain format and your other government customers don't need it in that format. We do a lot of things based on the customers’ needs, but I think the functionality in this next release is taking some of those considerations and putting them in the software, so they're there already. So the 10-34's and 10-35's that the government requires, their putting that into the Oracle functionality, whereas before we had to make those on our own.

It takes us a while, but we do things very methodically. We have not typically had outside consultants and we typically do our own upgrades. I think that that's a good thing.

I would advise potential user that, if they're implementing from scratch, to really, really learn the product before they implement. Oracle is known for certain decisions you make where you come to a point to either turn right or left, and if you turn right you can't decide later to turn left. I think some people try to slam things in and take short cuts, but I've done implementations in two different companies, and I've found that doing the slow and methodical approach and really planning it out is the best way to go.

We've run our business on it for 15 years now. It's provided us good functionality, good flexibility, so if we need to extend it or modify it, it's fairly easy to do, and those changes are persistent.

It's been very useful over the years and Oracle's fairly responsive to requests for changes. It takes a while for them to get through, because it takes a lot to get those processes reviewed through Oracle. It's been a good partnership for us over the years.

I'd like to see more mobile applications, though I know they're working on that. It also needs simpler setups and simpler management tools. Currently the setup of mobile and some newer areas is not simple.

We've been using it since 1999.

Deployment is not simple, particular with mobile applications.

It has been a very stable product. We've pretty much taken all of the recommendations that Oracle provides. We do a multi-node implementation, so we've spread it out over multiple servers so that we don't have very many performance issues. Most of the performance issues we've had are related to IO, so that's a hardware issue and not software. Again, when we do have performance issues, it's always been working in SR with Oracle and they've been very responsive.

It's very easy to scale E-Business Suite as we need more servers. We can add them and take them away as needed. During year-end, we always need more horsepower, so we just add more servers and we can take them away afterwards.

They're always hiring new people, so if you get a new person, it's somewhat chancy on getting good support, but they generally have excellent people. Eventually you can get to somebody who's excellent, especially if your problem is a challenging one. It's easy to escalate it and get it up there.

I've always thought working with Oracle support has been much better than any other vendor we've worked with. They're always improving their website and making it more helpful. I've been very pleased with their support.

The most valuable feature is definitely the ability to go in as a manager or as an individual and do everything in one place, for example, to add/change/remove a goal. 

Mandating a goal plan was a really good idea because it forces you to actually think about it, and it makes it easier at the end of the day for a user. 

The ability to see the goals and move them over to next year in one place is really great. They can copy, extend, and delete all in one place.

We've only been playing with it less than a year - so not long - but it forced us to be able to have a change in management. It is really helping management to have a conversation about goals. 

Previously, goal management wasn't something we did well. Now that we have implemented Fusion, with powerful competencies, it's simplified the process. At the end of the day, the goal thing was awesome.

The account executive was good, but when it came to training HR, it really failed - on this point I'd rate Oracle as 3/10. 

The webinars are OK but they definitely didn't hit the target. 

This application is so large for a small company like ours, so it was very hard to train everyone with such an extensive product.

We implemented it this year.

Getting everyone on-board was a tad slow, but there were no major pick-ups, and all was well for the most part.

No issues encountered.

We had other Oracle products, but I can't remember which ones.

It was seamless and went very well.

We use a vendor who is really great.

For us it's high, because now we can focus on gathering the right amount of info about our information.

We did, but I can't remember which ones.

I like the new version as it's easier to manage. The problem is that the timing is bad - they did quite a bit of work to the goals feature, and changed it around quite a bit. For me, it's hard work because I need to train everyone to use but it's much more fluid and easier to navigate.

We needed a lot more training and best practices for a small company. Oracle hasn't done a good job preparing best practices for small companies. However, it's great for goal management.

I'm working with a vendor to implement Oracle EDS for my customers.

I like Oracle ERP for streamlining the entire process from PRTL and invoice payments. It also has the decision and internet sale order, and my customers can correct the internet decision. It automatically converts to the internet order, and they don't need to create the entry object. They don't need to make a secondary ledger in the parent company and subsidiary. That's very helpful for internet decisions. If they get an order at the parent company, it automatically creates the sales system in the subsidiary.

The user interface could be better. It's not good because they made their interface all in one, and my customers don't want to use it. I have to customize the interface and personalize it to hide some fields on the screen. It has lots of information on the screen, and the user can't easily navigate it. It's very difficult to use. 

I think that Oracle should have something like best practices. They need to provide some patches to simplify the interface based on the industry niche. Because now we see everything on the same screen, but the users don't need all that information. It's complicated to use for end-users, and we have to spend more time training them.

In the next release, I think they should implement most of the features in the mobile app. It should be better. Oracle didn't update their mobile application for a very long time. Connecting the mobile application is complicated.

I have been working with Oracle E-Business Suite for 19 years.

Oracle support is good.

The initial setup is complicated. For the end-user, it'll take about two or three weeks to use one of the modules.

Oracle prices are better in Vietnam and more flexible. If we need to customize something in Oracle, it's very flexible and easy to customize.

I would tell potential users that they need to understand the requirements and the time required to implement them. They can implement it separately in phases. Phase one is very simple. It's simple for finance, procurement, and inventory. After that, we can extend it step by step. They shouldn't implement several models at once as it's complicated.

Oracle consultants should take more time to learn the product, and they have to understand the Vietnamese. They also take time to learn the product becasue it's very complicated.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle E-Business Suite a seven.

I like that one system covers everything. The main objective of ERP, in general, is to try to integrate the departments and control various processes. It's the main objective for big companies where many people are working. By implementing ERP, you can control the processes, control the business consulting, and have one system to handle everything.

They don't have built-in bank integrations, which would be very helpful. For API, I know Oracle has a big library of APIs, and you can extend it. But most important integrations are still missing. These are mainly for features to integrate with other systems and other market forces, like banks or civic parties.

For example, for the environment to work using E-Business Suite, which is not handling the budgeting in the power tool, we have to purchase Hyperion and integrate Hyperion with the E-Business Suite. If you want reporting, you can select a reporting tool or different reporting tools for business intelligence. For each case, it's painful to have multi-systems in place. Most companies prefer to have one system and it's costly.

I have been using Oracle E-Business Suite for about 13 years.

Oracle E-business Suite is a stable solution.

Oracle E-business Suite is easy to scale. But sometimes, the company requirements don't fit with the software requirements.

I'm an implementer, so the Oracle E-business Suite's initial setup is easy for me.

I implemented Oracle E-Business Suite by myself.

I would recommend Oracle E-Business Suite to potential users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle E-Business Suite an eight.

Our primary uses are in our financial and manufacturing systems.

The most valuable features are the financial-related capabilities. 

The simplicity of the user experience needs to be improved tremendously.

The support and analytics features need to be improved.

I have been working with the Oracle E-Business Suite for 20 years.

From my perspective and from my experience with other solutions, I would say that the Oracle E-Business Suite is very scalable. There are approximately 150 users.

I would rate the Oracle technical support and eight out of ten. The quality of the solution and the speed in which they provide it are good, but not excellent.

This is a complex implementation. It took approximately eight months to deploy.

We have an in-house team of five engineers for maintenance.

Considering the market at the moment, Oracle needs to adjust the pricing of this solution.

Overall, this is a good product I totally recommend it. That said, there are some issues with the UX, analytics, and general complexity of it. It is very good from an executive perspective and a very good tool, but from the UX-perspective, it is old-fashioned.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It has improved the way we worked. Everything is now on a very well-centered database. Before, we would have things saved on Excel, but it would be on different versions, or someone would have it saved on e-mail, and it would not be saved as an Excel file. It became frustrating. On Excel it is definitely harder to keep things. With so many people in the company, everybody had his own version. Definitely that created a big disconnect. The Oracle E-Business Suite was not able to get reports. It was not able to get the connectivity. Now, we can use this solution to streamline the documentation and products of our organization.

The database is feature rich, no doubt. It is also a a tool that can easily connect an entire company. From this, you can build any BI orders. The reporting solution is good and it has a good database that connects with everything.

The UI interface is not good. In addition, there is a constant challenge that new things are evolving and people are looking at new ways of connecting. They do not want to log into web interfaces. And, the standard UI does not give you flexibility. You need to have a specialist who will work on the workflow. If changes are made, alerts are required. This provides challenges. 

Additionally, if inventory gets linked with our OEM portals, you enter some number, order number, find the OEM number and then an inventory which you have ordered. You receive the GRN updates your inventory also, links with OEM, and we really good because then you'll know the third party hardware or whatever solution you're purchasing, what is the end of life, where is the end of support, when is the warranty ending, what is the new product coming?

All things can be related. Right now it is a stand alone system that is not integrated, whereas today you're talking about global solutions things can be in database. Even if it is not loud, even then things can be dated because you have only given purchase order to your OEM, you're under warranty. We have the right to get the information. OEM has the right to push information but then ERP is not supporting us. None of the effort goes into that.

The product does not crash. It is stable. 

We have not experienced problems with the scalability of the product. The only problem I have noticed is that sometimes the scales are not available easily in the market. Maybe in the future we will move to Linux or Interface Servers that will provide a lower cost solution. We will have to evaluate this in the future.

We are currently using the technical support because we have a relationship with Oracle to be able to raise tickets. We generally have not had many challenges.

The cost is high for this product.

When deciding on a solution, I suggest looking at the vendor, the stabiliy of the product and the tech support provisions. A business has to run smoothly, and the solution has to help ease that process.